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CRAIG WINDHAM: From NPR News in Washington, I'm Craig Windham. New figures show mortgage lenders seizing more homes over the summer than in any three-month period since the start of the housing crisis back in 2006. But NPR's Paul Brown reports the new numbers do not appear to reflect the total number of properties in trouble.

PAUL BROWN: The foreclosure market and monitoring firm, RealtyTrac, says that last month is the first one to notch more than 100,000 home repossessions since RealtyTrac started keeping records in 2005. And RealtyTrac's Rick Sharga says even as foreclosure actions rise in many states, banks are actually being conservative to limit the glut on the market.

RICK SHARGA: Having too many distressed properties on the market will lower everybody's home prices.

PAUL BROWN: And Sharga says the high number of repossessions does not reflect some temporary foreclosure halts by banks over issues of record keeping. He predicts those actions will further distort the market in months ahead. Paul Brown, NPR News.

CRAIG WINDHAM: The nation's trade deficit has increased sharply, widening in August to more than $46 billion. The numbers reflect a surge in imports of consumer products as businesses restock in hopes of a rise in demand. Art Hogan, chief market analyst with Jefferies and Company, says though he's not too concerned by the numbers.

ART HOGAN: We'll probably see this number sort of shoring up a bit and getting better over the next couple of months. So I wouldn't set up too many flares on this one just yet. I think it's better to watch the trend, and the trend is working in the right direction.

CRAIG WINDHAM: In other reports out today, the Labor Department says first-time claims for unemployment benefits have risen for the third straight week. And wholesale prices increased in September, but excluding the volatile food and energy categories, prices at the wholesale level barely budged. Authorities in Pakistan say they have foiled a plot to kill the country's prime minister and other top officials. NPR's Julie McCarthy says investigators became aware of the plot while interviewing seven suspected militants.

JULIE MCCARTHY: Police sources in the Pakistani city of Bahawalpur say the suspects belong to an offshoot of the virulently anti-Shia group Lashkar-e Jhangvi, which has ties to both the Pakistani Taliban and Al-Qaeda. They were arrested last night after the suspects opened fire on police who were attempting to pull them over for a routine check.

Police say they were plotting to kill Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani and Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi. Police say they learned of the terror plots which also targeted senior police and military officers during the initial interrogation of the defendants who include a university lecturer in Islamic studies. Julie McCarthy, NPR News, Islamabad.

CRAIG WINDHAM: A former president of Afghanistan who now heads a new peace council there says he's convinced the Taliban are ready for peace talks. But Burhanuddin Rabbani has told journalists the Taliban are expressing some conditions for taking part in any negotiations with the government. On Wall Street, stocks are holding on to narrow gains so far. The Dow Industrials are up 14 points at 11,110. The NASDAQ composite index is up 4 points. This is NPR News from Washington.

ANNOUNCER 1: Support for news comes from Overture Films presenting Stone, now playing in select theaters.

PHIL PICARDI: From Minnesota Public Radio News, I'm Phil Picardi. Three people were found dead in a Vadnais Heights apartment last night. The Ramsey County Sheriff's Office says the bodies of a woman and her two children were found in a unit at the Willow Ridge Apartments. A family member has been taken into custody, and no other suspects are being sought.

Twin Cities' based Medtronic has settled lawsuits over a defibrillator that was recalled three years ago. Medtronic said 13 patients may have died because of problems with wires on the Sprint Fidelis device. The company says it's paying $268 million to settle claims.

Xcel Energy has cleared a major hurdle in its application for a 20-year license extension at the Prairie Island nuclear plant. Stephanie Hemphill reports.

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: The Prairie Island Indian community argued that Xcel Energy hasn't proven it can continue to operate the aging plant safely. Tribal attorney Phil Mahowald says the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has documented numerous problems that Xcel hasn't addressed properly.

PHIL MAHOWALD: We would like them to demonstrate their commitment to an effective aging management program and to demonstrate that they actually have made the improvements in their safety culture.

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: But the NRC has rejected the tribal contention, and the application will proceed to the next stage. Mahowald says the tribe will consider a possible court challenge. Xcel says it's committed to safety. A decision on the license extension could come early next year. Stephanie Hemphill, Minnesota Public Radio News.

PHIL PICARDI: Governor Pawlenty has scheduled a special session of the state legislature for next Monday. Lawmakers will consider a flood relief package for Southern Minnesota. The date was set after President Obama last night signed a federal disaster declaration for the region.

The Minnesota Wild played their first home game of the season tonight. They host the Edmonton Oilers at the Xcel Energy Center. Sunny skies today. Highs in the 50s and 60s. It's Minnesota Public Radio News.

ANNOUNCER 2: Programming is supported in part by our generous philanthropic partners, including the Deluxe Corporation Foundation.

ANNOUNCER 3: Support for this program comes from Progressive Insurance. Progressive provides options for people to shop for car, boat, motorcycle, truck, and RV insurance at 1-800-PROGRESSIVE and progressive.com. Now, that's progressive.

KERRI MILLER: I'm Kerri Miller. This is Midmorning Minnesota Public Radio News. Now, here's where it starts to get really weird in Christopher Farnsworth's new novel Blood Oath. A young operative has been recruited by the president for a special assignment. His mission, manage the president's secret weapon, who's described to the young man like this.

He's smarter than you, stronger than you. He was eating people over a century before you were born. That's right. The President of the United States can deploy his own personal vampire when he needs to. Even Nixon used him once or twice. Is that any stranger, though, than writing in a man-eating jellyfish into Jane Austen's classic Sense and Sensibility or zombies into Pride and Prejudice?

This hour, why zombies, vampires, witches, and werewolves still thrill and are as hot as they've ever been in fiction. Our guest, Chris Farnsworth, is a novelist and scriptwriter. He's the author of Blood Oath. The book has been optioned for a film. He joins us from LA. Hi, Chris. Good to have you here.

CHRISTOPHER FARNSWORTH: Hi, Kerri. Thanks so much for having me.

KERRI MILLER: Ben Winters is with us as well. He's a journalist and the author of Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. His new book is titled Android Karenina. And he joins us from Boston. And Ben, it's good to have you here as well.

BEN WINTERS: Pleasure to be here. Thank you.

KERRI MILLER: Later in the hour, David Edelstein is going to join us. He's a film critic for New York Magazine and for NPR's Fresh Air. Now, for our listeners, tell us about your favorite vampire, zombie, or witch or werewolf book or movie. I'm making a list. As I always do, we're posting it on the Midmorning book page.

And tell me what attracts you to these rather creepy and supernatural beings. I mean, why do you want to read fiction about these creatures? 800-242-2828. If you're in the Twin Cities, 651-227-6000. If you're online, send in your title, mprnews.org and click on Send Us a Question.

Again, your favorite fiction, I guess I could say nonfiction also, that features vampires, zombies, witches, werewolves, and tell us why. And we'll make a list, and we'll post it on the Midmorning book page. So Chris, here's something that I was thinking about.

I'm reading your novel right now. And I was wondering when did it happen that vampires became hot and sexy? Because there was a time when they were considered to be grotesque, and no president would want to be 10 feet near them, right?

CHRISTOPHER FARNSWORTH: Absolutely, yeah. I think that's a fairly recent development. I think it probably started with Bela Lugosi when he portrayed Dracula in the Tod Browning film. I think that what he was able to do was transform the idea of the vampire as this sort of undead zombie-like revenant into a suave European man of the world.

And he had this outrageous accent. And although he's not our idea of a sex symbol today, he really I think transformed the idea of a monster into someone who would be wearing evening clothes and would talk and converse knowledgeably with European and English gentlemen.

KERRI MILLER: It's true though, isn't it, that when vampires first came into the literary scene that they were bloated, grotesque, smelling, dripping blood? I mean, there was no idea that they were anything but things that you would want to be nowhere near. And somehow-- and you think Lugosi was instrumental in changing the perception.

CHRISTOPHER FARNSWORTH: I do. I think that in order to make him-- make Dracula pretty enough for the big screen, I think that there had to be that shift. As you were saying, vampires were traditionally basically just reanimated corpses swollen up with blood.

KERRI MILLER: Right.

CHRISTOPHER FARNSWORTH: And there's a long, long tradition of that. I think if you want to get a really good look at what a scary vampire looks at you look at Nosferatu, which is-- was actually the first bootleg Dracula. Bram Stoker's widow actually had to sue the German film makers because they took the plot of Dracula without any permission.

KERRI MILLER: Interesting.

CHRISTOPHER FARNSWORTH: And what they-- but that Nosferatu who was called Count Orlok in that version is a horrible, terrifying creature. Even today, the movie is incredibly disturbing, especially when Max Schreck is on screen who played Nosferatu. He's just this pale, tall, clawed, weird-looking fanged creature.

KERRI MILLER: And so, Ben, here we are, and they're sexy to the point where in Stephenie Meyer's novels, it's the big tension. Are they ever going to get it on, or is she going to resist, right?

BEN WINTERS: Right. It's so different. It's so different than Max Schreck, than Nosferatu, the idea that we would want to be seeing the romantic entanglements of these monsters. It's like it's-- we've come so far in the last century in terms of the vision of vampires and other monsters as being-- and I think Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a big leap forward in that sense of, well, let's take these monsters and sort of fold them into the popular culture more generally and see how they fare in a world that's less like Transylvania and more like Beverly Hills.

And it's just sort of fascinating how that continues to evolve. But what's interesting is that in one guise or another, they, vampires and also just monsters more generally, remain a part of our culture. They're just so enduring. They transform, and they take on different guises. And they're sexy or they're not sexy or they're guarding the president or they're doing whatever they do, but they're always around.

KERRI MILLER: I was reading something that Neil Gaiman wrote about or talked about this in Entertainment Weekly. And he had a very interesting perception of specifically vampires. He said contrary to how they may be portrayed today, vampires are really not about power.

Quote, "Vampires Should be outsiders. They should be sexual outsiders. They need to be charismatic. They need to be elegant, but they aren't out buying nice suits and calling the shots. If they are, the book is about something else." Does that make sense, Ben?

BEN WINTERS: Well, it's certainly an interesting take. I mean, yeah, I think the mythology of the vampire evolved out of an idea of outsiderness, no doubt about it. And I think if you were to go back through history, you're going to find that monsters-- the different ideas of monsters generally have evolved from ideas about outsiderness.

Women started to be called witches when they were old and no longer useful to the village. And they were-- well, who is that creepy lady? She's no longer useful doing housework. She's no longer useful reproducing. Then she must, in fact, be a monster.

And so someone who is different or strange or unlike the rest of the population would get branded a monster and would be accused of preying on the young. Scary stuff, but as far as we can go back in literature, there has been monsters in literature, The Odyssey or Beowulf.

KERRI MILLER: Yeah, that's right.

BEN WINTERS: These guys are finding monsters. And I think it's because people have always wondered, well, what's wrong with that guy over there? And this is one of the ways we find to explain the world to ourselves.

KERRI MILLER: Here's Tom in Saint Paul, who says Klaus Kinski in Werner Herzog's Nosferatu remake, Kinski was always a bit creepy, and in Nosferatu, his creepiness serves the role. You agree with that, Chris?

CHRISTOPHER FARNSWORTH: Absolutely. Yeah, Kinski-- it's where you start to see this transformation into more overtly sexual idea of vampires, which you also saw with Christopher Lee in the Hammer horror films. But going back to something Ben said and your comment about Neil Gaiman, I absolutely agree with that. I think vampires have lost some of their, God forgive me, their bite because we've domesticated them to some extent.

KERRI MILLER: Well, except that your vampire, the president's vampire, Nathaniel Cade has kind of a little sexy love interest. She'd like to be his love interest. So you've incorporated that as well.

CHRISTOPHER FARNSWORTH: Right, but she is a vampire. And that's the thing, is Cade at one point in the novel says to Zach the Handler for the president, he says, do you want to have sex with a cow?

KERRI MILLER: That's right.

CHRISTOPHER FARNSWORTH: Them too-- at least as I imagine them to-- seduction is just a tool they use to get their meal. Vampires see humans as food, not love. I think the idea of somebody preying on us by exploiting our vulnerabilities like that is very primal to us.

KERRI MILLER: And creepy. Let's take some calls here. If you've just tuned in, we're talking about why monsters overall endure in literature and, of course, in film. We're talking specifically about vampires and zombies and werewolves and witches. Chris Farnsworth is one of our guests. He's got a new book out called the Blood Oath.

And Ben Winters is with us as well. And his books include-- I've got to read your newest book, Android Karenina. Ben, I can't even imagine how that reads.

BEN WINTERS: Well--

KERRI MILLER: And I will. I am putting it right now on the list. 800-242-2828 to join us. 651-227-6000 to tell us about your favorite monster title or monster film, nprnews.org and click on Send Us a Question. To Andy in Minneapolis, hi, Andy.

AUDIENCE: Hi, there. How's it going this morning?

KERRI MILLER: Hi. It's good. What would you like to add to the list?

AUDIENCE: Christopher Moore's books, Bloodsucking Fiends, You Suck, and Bite Me.

KERRI MILLER: Are they satires, or what's the story?

AUDIENCE: They are about vampires. I mean, he's written other books about other monsters and stuff. But those are the three that follow the life of one new vampire that gets turned. But he's a very witty writer.

KERRI MILLER: Puts a lot of humor then into the vampire genre.

AUDIENCE: Yeah, a lot humor.

BEN WINTERS: Actually, I haven't read those books, but I've heard wonderful things about Christopher Moore's writing on vampires. And it's actually-- it just makes me think about how-- and I'm sure the caller would agree. Part of the fun of monsters sometimes is seeing how we can put them in comedic contexts.

And I feel like the pendulum swings back and forth between us wanting monsters who are silly and who are made to be foolish and who tell jokes or are jokes. And then we want also at other times monsters who are just genuinely terrifying.

KERRI MILLER: So Ben, why do you think there are times, though, that we're willing to take our monsters with satire, but other times, we want them to be really scary, why?

BEN WINTERS: Well, I mean, I don't know exactly. And I think it depends on probably a million different factors and the culture at large and the prevalent mood of society or whatever. But also, it's just-- it depends on who's doing the writing and who's doing the reading or the watching or whatever.

My books, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters and Android Karenina, they take seemingly scary things, and they turn them into the stuff of fun. Whereas there are other books that take scary things and make them as scary as possible for the purpose of really-- of getting a thrill. And I try in my work to make it as scary as possible in the scary parts, but it's all in the service of satire, as I think it might be true for Christopher Moore as well. Although, as I've said, I haven't read those.

KERRI MILLER: Chris, do you think there are-- depending on what's going on in the culture-- I mean, we're coming out of an economic recession. That's been seriously scary for people. Do they get some kind of escape and release in reading books about vampires?

CHRISTOPHER FARNSWORTH: Absolutely. I think that if you look at our popular culture, when we are faced with times of great uncertainty, people tend to look for a way to tame that through monsters. Look in the 1950s. You have the Martian invasion movies when people were terrified of communism and McCarthyism.

In the 1980s, you had the unstoppable serial killer like Jason and Freddy. And now, vampires have come back around again. I think that we're getting really bad at imagining the future. So one thing that we're trying to do--

BEN WINTERS: Chris, you might know more about this than I do, but I know that there are theories about at some times-- I can't remember if it's maybe under Republican presidents, we like zombie movies, and under Democratic presidents, we like vampires. I don't know if anyone's ever heard that theory before, but there are definitely-- people have written graduate thesis about these issues, where the monsters come from and what they mean to us.

CHRISTOPHER FARNSWORTH: Absolutely, yeah.

KERRI MILLER: Chris and Ben, hang with me here. I've got a little business to transact. I'll be right back at you for our listeners here who are calling in. Stay with us if you're holding. We'll get to the titles that you want to add to the list. And if you're just joining us, talk to us about your favorite vampire, zombie, monster novels and films.

Euan Kerr is here. And he brought me a great book that I can add to the list called Kill the Dead, a Sandman Slim Novel. I've got that on the list too, Euan. But here we are-

EUAN KERR: Here we are.

KERRI MILLER: With a message to our listeners.

EUAN KERR: The message is join already. OK.

KERRI MILLER: Right, so we can get back to the vampires and zombies, all right?

EUAN KERR: Yeah, let's get back to the real business here, folks. Yes, folks, today is the first day of our member drive. And we have some-- it's a great day because we have this challenge in front of us. If we can get 2,500 people through the door, we can get $25,000. Great radio.

Our goal before the end of Midmorning is to get just another 90 people through.

KERRI MILLER: Is that it? Let's blow by that, OK?

EUAN KERR: I know Kerri is going to say 90, huh, huh.

KERRI MILLER: That's right. Keep going.

EUAN KERR: We need many, many more 1-800-227-2811 or click and join at minnesotapublicradio.org.

KERRI MILLER: Here is the incentive of the day. You will hear no better deal than you're going to hear right now. You know our Talking Volume series is sold out. You know there are no more tickets to be had. We sold out Franzen. We sold out Nicole Krauss. We sold out Nora Ephron, and we've sold out Anita Shreve. You want a ticket to Nicole Krauss-

EUAN KERR: You want a ticket?

KERRI MILLER: And Nora Ephron? Hey, there's one way to get it. Join the Kerri Miller Book Club at $50 a month. You know I send you five or six books that I have handpicked. You come to parties with the authors. But today only, until these tickets are gone, and I think they're going to be gone soon, four tickets to go along with your new membership in the KM Book Club. Four tickets, two to Nicole Krauss event, two to Nora Ephron.

How to get in on that? 800-227-2811 online at minnesotapublicradio.org. May I say these are new. I love you all that are already in the club. We want to add some people to the club, so the parties are just that much more fun. So new members of the KMBC. And we're still working on you, but we'll get you sooner or later.

EUAN KERR: Indeed, indeed. Well, any zombie books on that list?

KERRI MILLER: There might be.

EUAN KERR: There might be.

KERRI MILLER: There might be.

EUAN KERR: It's all kind of secret, though.

KERRI MILLER: That's right.

EUAN KERR: Woo-hoo. Anyway, 1-800-227-2811, click and join at minnesotapublicradio.org. We have all sorts of first-day member specials. It's all there on the website, but we can't do any of this without your help. We need your support to keep this radio station strong, this web service strong, this news and information service strong.

You need to go to the computer. You need to go to the phone and do your bit. We need to hear from you today. 1-800-227-2811, click and join at minnesotapublicradio.org, and then we'll get back to the vampires.

KERRI MILLER: Yeah, and the zombies and the werewolves and the witches. 90 new and renewing members by the top of the hour. Boy, that is usually-

EUAN KERR: Nothing.

KERRI MILLER: Easily said and done.

EUAN KERR: Just 83. 83 to go.

KERRI MILLER: Yeah, 83 new and renewing members. Think about the way you want to be a member. And by all means, think about being a sustainer.

EUAN KERR: Well, that's a good one.

KERRI MILLER: We've got a lot of people making that decision today. I'm sure we will hear from many more during the drive. Here's the story with the sustainers. Basically, you come in. You make your contribution, and it rolls on until you tell us to stop. You don't get those renewal notices, and you don't have to listen to us during the drive.

We are not talking to you, you sustainers. But we thank you so much for making that commitment. 800-227-2811. If you're streaming us today-- and I know who you are. I know a lot of you stream because you send in questions day in and day out. Will you think about clicking and joining at minnesotapublicradio.org?

EUAN KERR: We just got a little over half an hour to go. We have 82 people we need to get through the door to make our-- or keep ourselves on track as we get towards trying to pull in that $25,000. Think about how often you listen to this program, what do you get from it.

This is Midmorning. This is the show-- the only local show where the blood flecks on the host lips are actually genuine. This is so--

KERRI MILLER: Oh, my gosh. That's lipstick.

EUAN KERR: The tough questions get asked here.

KERRI MILLER: That is not-- those are not blood flecks.

EUAN KERR: The tough questions get asked here.

KERRI MILLER: You're scaring people.

EUAN KERR: You appreciate it, and that's why you tune in. We hope that we will hear from you today. Get your name in. $10 a month, we can send you this marvelous clean canteen which you can use for water. You can use for coffee. You could use for blood, I suppose, if that's your wish.

And also, you get the 1 pound of Peace Coffee, but you have to make the action. You have to go to the computer. 1-800-227-2811 or click and join at minnesotapublicradio.org.

KERRI MILLER: If you find yourself needing to feed in the afternoon, as all vampires do, hey, haul out your new clean canteen-

EUAN KERR: We serve all listeners.

KERRI MILLER: And take a deep drink of that. 800-227-2811 online at minnesotapublicradio.org. That's at $10 a month. The Kerri Miller Book Club is at $50 a month. I send you five to six books through the year. I invite you to parties. You get to know other book lovers.

And best of all, right now, only for new Kerri Miller Book Club members, we've got those tickets to Nicole Krauss coming up in late October and then Nora Ephron coming up in November. The shows have been sold out forever, but those tickets to you and only while they last. 800-227-2811.

EUAN KERR: Just 80 people to go to make our goal here. But of course, that's not going to satisfy Kerri. We need many, many, many more. Make the job a little lighter to get that $25,000 through the door. Think about it. This is a service-- I mean, this is a news and information service.

You get the hard news. You get the stuff that's happening immediately. But also, you get discussions.

KERRI MILLER: You get zombies.

EUAN KERR: You get zombies. You get discussions about what the president should be reading. It's all here, folks.

KERRI MILLER: And why the president should have his own vampire. I mean, we've got it covered. And I've got a lot of zombie lovers hanging on the lines here to add their titles. So we need to get this done.

EUAN KERR: Indeed, indeed. So 1-800-227-2811, click and join at minnesotapublicradio.org. The number is dropping down to 77, 74.

KERRI MILLER: OK, good.

EUAN KERR: It's going. It's going. It's going, but we do need to hear from you right now.

KERRI MILLER: There have got to be some Kerri Miller Book Club members, new members in that group.

EUAN KERR: Indeed.

KERRI MILLER: There have got to be. And they're getting-- the first ones in the door, the tickets will be gone. Four tickets, two to Nicole Krauss, two to Nora Ephron. Never done this before, but there was such demand for these shows that we wanted to up the ante a little bit here for people who truly love books and who can make the commitment to the Kerri Miller Book Club.

It's $50 a month. You get books and parties, and it's really cool. Maybe that's not-- maybe you're not interested in that. Maybe you're not ready for that. Then great. We've got lots of different options, and you can check them out online.

EUAN KERR: 1-800-227-2811 or go online. Go to minnesotapublicradio.org and find out all about this marvelous radio service and how you can be part of it. We're here because of members. Members make up the most significant chunk of our funding here. And that's why we-- I mean, it's we've tried lots of different ways of raising money. And frankly, folks, this is the best way to do it we need to hear from you right now.

KERRI MILLER: You got to listen to this. Jeremy Bergerson from Alexandria is a brand new member.

EUAN KERR: Thank you.

KERRI MILLER: And he says MPR is the best public radio in the country. I lived in California for three years. I was struck by how CPR was so-- that must be California Public Radio was so far behind MPR. Ooh.

EUAN KERR: Ooh.

KERRI MILLER: Chris Farnsworth lives in LA. I might have to put him on the spot about that. Shawn Silver renewed his membership. Says Cathy Wurzer has been my co-pilot for my morning commute for the last six years. So he listens to Morning Edition and my buddy Cathy Wurzer.

Whatever reason that you decide to become a member, we are grateful for your support. And we ask you to step up now to help us meet the goal. How many left to go, Euan?

EUAN KERR: Just 65 to go before the top of the hour, but-

KERRI MILLER: Yeah, keep it.

EUAN KERR: Why leave it at that?

KERRI MILLER: Going back to the vampires and the zombies here, but I hope you'll continue to click and join at minnesotapublicradio.org and call 800-227-2811. Chris, Ben, you're still hanging in there with me?

BEN WINTERS: Yeah.

CHRISTOPHER FARNSWORTH: Absolutely.

KERRI MILLER: Great. Good to have you there. And then I'm going to go right back to the phones because we've got full phone lines here to Matt in Park Rapids. Hi, Matt. Thanks so much for waiting.

AUDIENCE: Hi. Yeah, I'm a big fan of the zombie genre and any form, movies and video games and books. And I did just pick up Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. And I'm looking forward to reading that. But I called specifically about Shaun of the Dead, which is probably one of my favorite zombie movies out there just because I love the fact that it combines the satire of the comedic elements along with the really blood and guts and gore that you get with a good zombie movie.

KERRI MILLER: I've never seen those movies, but I know they're popular. Ben, do you watch them?

BEN WINTERS: Oh, yeah, Shaun of the Dead is great, and your caller is absolutely right. What the filmmaker is doing there is celebrating the genre while at the same time, lightly spoofing it. And it's really-- it's delightful stuff. And I mean, like I was saying before, there was a lot of mileage to be gotten comedically with these monster tropes because they're so familiar to us. They're such an important part of our culture that everyone recognizes them, and everyone can get a laugh out of them.

KERRI MILLER: Chris, I wondered like-- go ahead.

CHRISTOPHER FARNSWORTH: Oh, I'm sorry. And just like Ben was saying earlier too, the scares in Shaun of the Dead are actually very genuine.

BEN WINTERS: That's correct.

CHRISTOPHER FARNSWORTH: By the end, it becomes a very scary film even though you're laughing through most of it.

KERRI MILLER: Chris, I--

BEN WINTERS: That's what's it's so cool. I mean, that's-- it's like a magic trick to both send up something like a genre like zombie films and also make it work for what it is.

CHRISTOPHER FARNSWORTH: That's true.

KERRI MILLER: It's kind of that self-conscious wink, wink. We know there's something funny about this, but we're not going to take away the thing that everybody loves to be scared about.

BEN WINTERS: That's right. It's like a Scream movie too.

KERRI MILLER: You're self-aware. Right. Chris, I was going to ask you about-- I noticed that one of the things that you've done in this Blood Oath novel is at the top of the chapters, you have little essays or things that you've taken out of-- I don't know, real government papers or something like that. And you also have this thing that you say is taken from the briefing book codename Nightmare Pet.

And these are supposed to be descriptions of what a vampire actually is. Now, did you make all that up, or have you actually done research into the history of--

CHRISTOPHER FARNSWORTH: I actually did make it all up. I'm glad it sounds so plausible, though. Yeah, it's the idea if the government really did have a vampire, then absolutely, there would be people who would put him on an autopsy table and crack him open while he's still undead and try to figure out what makes him work.

And the codename Nightmare Pet is the codename Cade was given over 100 years ago. And it's how-- and this is-- basically, there's been years and years of research into what goes into making a vampire.

KERRI MILLER: Well, that's why I wondered if you were tapping into some of that research or this is saying--

CHRISTOPHER FARNSWORTH: That's classified. It's all classified.

KERRI MILLER: OK, I got you.

CHRISTOPHER FARNSWORTH: It's actually I owe a lot to a really good writer by the name of Peter Watts, who wrote this fantastic sci-fi novel called Blindsight, that is actually a vampire novel in disguise. And he theorizes that vampires were actually a different evolutionary offshoot of humans who died out right before we started writing things down, which is why it's almost a race memory. And this part's actually true. Almost every culture in the world has some kind of vampire myth.

KERRI MILLER: No kidding.

BEN WINTERS: Oh yeah.

CHRISTOPHER FARNSWORTH: Yeah, it's almost entirely universal.

KERRI MILLER: Why?

CHRISTOPHER FARNSWORTH: And that's a really great question. There's something we find really fundamental about the idea of these night-based predators who come out and essentially eat us.

BEN WINTERS: Can I just throw in here-

KERRI MILLER: Do.

BEN WINTERS: That actually every-- virtually every culture in history has had some sort of sea monster myth also. Not to bring the conversation around to my book, but I discovered that-

KERRI MILLER: Go right ahead, Ben.

BEN WINTERS: Like vampires, there is something that is instinctual in human beings that is scared of the water. And I think there's something instinctual in human beings that is also scared of death and of dying and of the idea of dying unexpectedly. So we created these myths around dying that included people who would come in the night and kill us for no reason.

KERRI MILLER: Well, Ben, how about this idea-- I mean, would you say it's the same just as you will find a vampire-like creature in many different cultures and myths, you will also find this idea that somehow, there are people that never quite die or when they die, then they rise up again and they live among us as zombies do?

BEN WINTERS: Oh, sure. I mean, there are so many things that are hard to explain and that have always been hard to explain about other people and about the natural world that humans have always come up with elaborate sometimes-- or bizarre or what seemingly bizarre explanations for things we can't understand. And those things are refined and refined and turned into these oral stories-- these oral traditions and become a kind of truth of monsters.

KERRI MILLER: I want to bring David Edelstein into the conversation here. He's a film critic for New York Magazine and for MPR's Fresh Air. David, good to have you here.

DAVID EDELSTEIN: Thank you for having me.

KERRI MILLER: I know you just listened to that last bit of the conversation that we had.

DAVID EDELSTEIN: Oh, it's been exciting. I've been-

KERRI MILLER: So tell--

DAVID EDELSTEIN: Chomping at the bit to jump in-

KERRI MILLER: So tell me--

DAVID EDELSTEIN: To share all my memories.

KERRI MILLER: Well, tell me what you think it is about-- as Chris and Ben have said that you can roam the world's cultures wide, and you will find myths about similar kinds of creatures.

DAVID EDELSTEIN: Well, I should point out-- I'm sorry for giggling, but it's all what you want to project on it because let's face it. I'm sorry to break it to everybody, but there are no vampires. There are no zombies.

KERRI MILLER: All right, you're off the show right now.

DAVID EDELSTEIN: I'm so sorry. It's what each and every culture over these distinct eras have made of this sort of fundamental idea of a creature who comes in the night and sucks blood. In the old days, I always thought it was really interesting nobody ever talks about the more ancient myths and all these sort of bloodborne diseases that insects have delivered and bats and things and the whole role of garlic.

Now, I'm not one of these woo-woo alternative medicine guys, but it's pretty clear that garlic is like the most potent natural antibiotic there is. I mean, if you eat it, it will do all sorts of things to your bowels, but it will also make you reasonably healthy. And the idea that you this lore sprang up whereby you would hang these things of garlic in the window, and you wouldn't have these blood-- and you would eat garlic, and it would keep the vampires away, that's just a very early example of how something scientific, something real has sort of then crept into the myth, into the folklore and became adopted for all sorts of weird reasons of its own.

And then what happened with vampires is so weird because they got taken up by the romantics. Remember when-- you guys remember Polidori? He was Shelley's doctor.

CHRISTOPHER FARNSWORTH: Right, Byron's personal physician.

DAVID EDELSTEIN: Byron's physician, right. Sorry. And so he conceived of a vampire who was kind of a romantic figure, lovelorn, doomed to be an outsider. And as I recall, he even kills himself on a crossroads at the end. And then Stoker took that, but Bram Stoker in Dracula brought in-- remember in Nosferatu, more so even than the Dracula movies, he brought in plague, this idea of rats coming in, infected rats from Europe.

So it had this sort of xenophobic content in it suddenly. And also, we must protect our frail English women from these Eastern European men who are going to sap their will and take them away. And that's what we get. And you all mentioned the Hammer films and Christopher Lee coming in and adding a lot of sex to it.

And also, I really want to mention Barnabas Collins because Barnabas Collins, he's the forerunner.

KERRI MILLER: Oh, I loved him, Dark Shadows. Boy, was he sexy.

DAVID EDELSTEIN: He was. He was amazing. And that was a very-- that was an accident. That was a guy, an actor who couldn't remember his lines. Jonathan Frid brought on to a dying soap opera-

KERRI MILLER: Really?

DAVID EDELSTEIN: To be a guest villain. And he couldn't remember-- and he couldn't read the teleprompter, and he couldn't remember his lines. And he looked so sad and forlorn as he kept making a hash of the script that viewers sort of-- their hearts went out to him. He suddenly got these thousands and thousands of letters pouring into the studio. And so they kept him.

But he was a villain, so what did they do? So they turn him into-- they go back to the Gothic tradition. Remember Rochester and Jane Eyre and people like that?

KERRI MILLER: Oh, yeah.

DAVID EDELSTEIN: And they make him this sort of lonely, haunted, figure with ghosts in his closet, in this case, literally. And all of a sudden, you have the rebirth of the romantic vampire. The Twilight and other places have now embraced with a vengeance. So it's fascinating to see how this evolution from basically insects giving people fatal anemia to Byronic Don Juans who can't read teleprompters.

KERRI MILLER: I love it that you brought up Dark Shadows. And I haven't thought about that, but I loved that as a kid. Let me take some calls here because I think we've got some callers that want to follow up on what we've said. To Stephanie in Saint Paul, hi, Stephanie. Thanks for waiting.

AUDIENCE: Yeah, hi.

KERRI MILLER: Hi. What did you want to say?

AUDIENCE: Thanks for the topic. Two quick things that may amuse your guest speakers. One was once I was doing research on vampires for a bat class that I was teaching about bat myth. And I was surprised to find that in some ancient European legends, they had vampires, but the vampires were not bad. They were vegetables.

KERRI MILLER: The vampires were vegetables?

AUDIENCE: They were vegetables, literally things that went bump in the night. And they could be squash or-- I don't know. So obviously, that is not very sexy, and nobody ever picks that one up. However, I must say to one of your guests, au contraire, there is a real vampire. There is some island on which there are finches and there-- they're little birds. And there is a limited food supply.

And the birds discovered that if they pecked on a mammal or a lizard and drank a little bit of blood, that was so much higher in protein that they could survive better than trying to find grain or stuff like that. So--

DAVID EDELSTEIN: Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Of course, there are parasites that feed on blood. I'm talking about the undead, the idea that you kill it and then it's resurrected and--

AUDIENCE: Oh, I know. You're no fun. It's just a vampire--

DAVID EDELSTEIN: Oh, OK. You're right. You're right. You know what? I was wrong. There are vampires. Forgive me.

AUDIENCE: We should have a fun little [INAUDIBLE].

DAVID EDELSTEIN: I'm such a killjoy.

KERRI MILLER: David, not only are there vampires, but the president has one. I don't know if you've gotten the memo on that.

DAVID EDELSTEIN: I can't wait to read this book. I just downloaded it to my Kindle. So I'm sorry. I should have prepped better.

KERRI MILLER: And there's also zombies in-

CHRISTOPHER FARNSWORTH: David, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

DAVID EDELSTEIN: You're very welcome.

KERRI MILLER: Jane Erye's-- all right, guys, I have to do a little business here. So hang with me, and we'll be right back. For our listeners, right back at you in just a couple of minutes. Here's Euan Kerr who has brought his own fangs--

EUAN KERR: The things you learn on this program.

KERRI MILLER: His own fangs into the studio here. We wish to drink of your commitment to public radio. How do we do that, Euan?

EUAN KERR: You go to the telephone and call 1-800-227-2811 or you go to your computer. Actually, we'd prefer if you went to your computer to minnesotapublicradio.org. And it's very simple. You become a member or you renew your membership. And suddenly, like life-sustaining blood, on we go here at the radio station.

KERRI MILLER: Your fangs recede. You no longer need to drink blood, and you're human again.

EUAN KERR: You feel just great. And it lasts for an entire year, an entire year. None of this sunset stuff. Yes, today is the first day of our member drive, and we need to hear from you. We have a challenge. And the challenge is we need to get 400 people through the door before the end of the show here. And guess what? We only have 23 to go. 20-- we can do it.

KERRI MILLER: We're blowing right by the goal.

EUAN KERR: We're going to be here. We're going to do many, many more than that, but we do need to hear from you right now.

KERRI MILLER: 800-227-2811 online at minnesotapublicradio.org. Join at the level that you decide is right for you. Maybe it's $5 a month. Maybe it's $10 a month, and we have some special gifts for you. Maybe it's the Kerri Miller Book Club, $50 a month and calling all brand new members of the Kerri Miller Book Club.

We have four tickets for you to our sold-out Talking Volume shows. You cannot get these tickets anywhere else. At the moment, Nicole Krauss totally sold out. Nora Ephron, totally sold out. You join the Kerri Miller Book Club new, new members, and you come in at $50 a month, and you get those five or six books. And you get the invites to the parties, and we all get to know each other.

But right now, you get four tickets to those events. 800-227-2811 online at minnesotapublicradio.org. Why don't you think about being a sustainer in the Kerri Miller Book Club? Then it would just go on and on. You'd be my lifelong member. I'd love it. We'd go off into the sunset together.

EUAN KERR: What a great deal. And today is the big day, folks, because it is the first day. The first day, we always like to get off to a good start. And we have got off to a good start, but we're not quite there yet. We're hoping if we can get all the people needed for this challenge, and we need 2,500 people total, then we get $25,000, which is a lot of radio, a lot of really good radio which you can help pay for.

1-800-227-2811 click and join at minnesotapublicradio.org. Support conversations like this, which are a lot of fun but actually with a lot of really interesting cultural insights about how we see ourselves and the world.

KERRI MILLER: This is not superficial talk about zombies. This is a serious talk about zombies and vampires. Hey, here's the thing. You make an investment into Minnesota Public Radio, and then you hear the results of that investment every day at Minnesota Public Radio.

You hear it on the radio. You see it on the website. You hear it in the quality of the reporting. Euan does book and film reviews. We've got lots of political news going on. We cover science. We cover the courts. That's what you get for your investment, and it is unique.

Wide ranging and deep drilling here. We give you a lot of context and analysis about what's going on in your world. That is something special in the media landscape. If you agree, this would be the time. 800-227-2811 online at minnesotapublicradio.org.

I also appreciate the vote for Midmorning. If you're clicking and joining right now, thank you for your commitment to Midmorning and to minnesotapublicradio.org as a whole.

EUAN KERR: Just 12 people to go to meet our goal. We're going to blow right through that. But let's see how far we can blow right through that as we go along our way to getting 2,500 new and renewing members through the door, get us that $25,000. You know it's amazing Kerri, as I walk around this newsroom, the thing I hear almost every day is the question, have we covered that yet? Is this something-- what's new about this?

Because there's this commitment to getting that information to our listeners. This is something that people have depended on for close to four decades now. I mean, this is information that you just can't get anywhere else. And it's just constantly coming, constantly coming. It's coming, though, because of members because members have supported this service over the years.

We hope that that membership support will support today. And we hope that you will be part of that support. 1-800-227-2811 or click and join at minnesotapublicradio.org.

KERRI MILLER: I'm thinking that maybe you've been a member for a while. Maybe you always make a note, a mental note to tune in when I say that we're talking about books. Maybe it's time to elevate your commitment to Minnesota Public Radio. My book club is a great way to do that.

Love to have you in the club. Good time to do it right now because four tickets come to you. Take a date. Take a friend. Take your mother to Nicole Krauss and Nora Ephron just right now as a new member of the Kerri Miller Book Club. Only new members please.

$50 a month. We will invite you to parties. We will send you five or six books. Sometimes the books come to you the very day that they're on sale. And right now, four tickets to those events. They are sold out, but you'll be there. 800-227-2811 online at minnesotapublicradio.org.

ANNOUNCER 4: When you join the Leadership Circle, you can experience MPR live and in person with invitations to behind-the-scenes events, live broadcasts, in-studio performances, and celebrity appearances. Take advantage of this opportunity to come together with other fascinating people. Become a Leadership Circle member today when you contribute $100 a month or more online at minnesotapublicradio.org or call 800-227-2811.

KERRI MILLER: Hey, if you're a Leadership Circle member, why don't you just come on in to the Kerri Miller Book Club too? It'll be great to have you. All right, we're going back to our conversation here about vampires and zombies and literature and witches and werewolves.

I should say Chris Farnsworth is one of our guests. He's a novelist and a scriptwriter. New book is called Blood Oath. Ben Winters, journalist and the author of Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. New book, which I'm going to download on my Kindle, called Android Karenina.

EUAN KERR: Me too. Me too.

KERRI MILLER: And David Edelstein is with us. He's a film critic for New York Magazine and for MPR's Fresh Air. Gentlemen, I must go back to the phones. We've got people holding here who have been holding for a while. So to Mary in Minneapolis, and Mary, I thank you for hanging on.

AUDIENCE: Yeah, my favorite still is Bram Stoker's Dracula. It's extremely well written. The flavor, the feel it gives you, I just think is so much better than other things coming out. I still think it's the best.

KERRI MILLER: Let's ask our guests.

CHRISTOPHER FARNSWORTH: Yeah, I absolutely have to agree with that.

KERRI MILLER: Who saying that? Chris?

CHRISTOPHER FARNSWORTH: Chris. Sorry.

KERRI MILLER: Why, Chris?

CHRISTOPHER FARNSWORTH: Yeah, in my zeal to jump forward-- and I love Bram Stoker's Dracula. I think it's still the gold standard. It's sometimes looked down on in an academic point of view. People tend to write-- people tend to view Frankenstein by Mary Shelley as the superior work. I think that's absolutely untrue.

KERRI MILLER: Well, Why?

CHRISTOPHER FARNSWORTH: Bram Stoker's Dracula is an incredibly well-written book. It's an epistolary novel. It's all told through the perspective of letters and newspaper articles. And Stoker had an incredible ability to bring the greater world into his work. He was able, like Ben and David were saying, to take these trends and these fears and crystallize them for his audience, which is why I think it became so popular.

BEN WINTERS: Someone just said-- one of the things I love about Dracula is that it's an epistolary novel. And actually, Frankenstein is also wonderfully constructed as a sort of a series of stories within stories. And what makes both of these novels so cool isn't just the monsters but the ingenuity of their construction that just makes it so much fun.

And I feel like monster writers since those two have-- at their best, have found interesting ways to play with the form as it sounds like Chris has done in his novel, which I am going to download.

KERRI MILLER: OK, everybody's doing the big downloads.

CHRISTOPHER FARNSWORTH: We're all downloading right now.

DAVID EDELSTEIN: We're all in the bookstore, I don't know. But I want to chime in about Stoker's book. I agree. It's also just a rip-snorting good yarn for all the movies that have claimed to be faithful to it like the so-called Coppola Bram Stoker's Dracula. No one has actually quite gotten that mixture of-- I mean, you might look at the first part of Horror of Dracula and the first part of the Bela Lugosi, the Tod Browning movie and this and that and Nosferatu, but nobody has ever quite gotten the whole of it.

The sad thing about the Coppola one is that they've taken this kind of spurious research done in the last couple of decades about Vlad the Impaler who on all evidence really has nothing to do with Stoker's conception of Count Dracula and grafted it on. So now, all of a sudden, he's this warlord who impales thousands of people on stakes. And it doesn't-- it's fine I guess, but it has nothing-- it's just sort of a detour away from the main myth that Stoker, let's face it, invented. Everything that we have now descends from him.

BEN WINTERS: It sounds to me like Vlad the Impaler would also be a great movie but just a different movie.

DAVID EDELSTEIN: Yes, exactly.

BEN WINTERS: Instead to do the two things together.

KERRI MILLER: Not trying to link it to the Dracula myth.

DAVID EDELSTEIN: And there's another woman. There was a Countess Elizabeth Báthory who falls in, who sometimes is called Countess Dracula who apparently did-- this is-- cover your ears, children. She apparently had young women led to her castle, and she drained their blood and bathed in it to keep her young.

And it sort of fit into this-- it was this idea of vampires being at that point associated with the aristocracy who were literally bleeding the peasants. So that figures into the myth too. But again, it doesn't really have that much to do with Stoker's Dracula.

BEN WINTERS: She took the metaphor a bit far, it sounds like.

KERRI MILLER: We have an online comment here from Justin in Boston, Massachusetts, who says, I just finished reading The Passage by Justin Cronin. That was also a big book this year. It was epic in scope, showed the US 100 years after the vampire virus outbreak. So great. David from Nolan in Minneapolis-- should I let you both comment on that? Ben.

BEN WINTERS: I got nothing. I haven't read that one. It sounds great.

KERRI MILLER: Chris, how about you?

CHRISTOPHER FARNSWORTH: Yeah, I did read it actually. I try not to read other vampire books while I'm writing, but this one was just way too tempting. It's basically a combination of the apocalypse novel and the vampire novel. And it's incredibly well written. It's a massive book in scope.

It's drawn very favorable comparisons to Stephen King and The Stand. Cronin really manages to make the characters believable and human in the face of this just truly mind-bending threat.

KERRI MILLER: And Chris, isn't the story about Justin Cronin that he wrote a very different kind of literature for a long time? And the book sold, but did not get all that much--

CHRISTOPHER FARNSWORTH: Right, he was a literary novelist who then he was-- according to the story was his daughter asked him to tell a story about a little girl who saves the world. And he sort of went off on this tangent.

DAVID EDELSTEIN: Can I just-

KERRI MILLER: Go ahead, David.

DAVID EDELSTEIN: Go back a little bit here because I think it's important? I don't know if you touched on too much zombie lore. But when zombies sort of came to the fore in popular culture in the '20s and '30s, it was very much based on these Haitian rituals and certain procedures that may or may not be true of people putting men and women into essentially trances in which they were-- I think they used MPR pledge drives or something over and over and-

KERRI MILLER: All right now, David.

DAVID EDELSTEIN: Then they became very malleable. So you were able to-- they were in a state of living death. Now, George Romero, the great seminal filmmaker, came along in the '60s and did Night of the Living Dead. And he actually doesn't like the word zombies. I mean, he prefers ghouls because he introduced the element of plague.

So all of a sudden, you didn't just have zombies, but you had people biting and infecting one another, and it became this mania. And then zombies have taken off in popular culture. And now, you can pretty much project whatever you like on them. They can represent AIDS or they can represent marauding rednecks or they can represent consumers or they can be left wing or right wing.

CHRISTOPHER FARNSWORTH: Right, you can put anything.

DAVID EDELSTEIN: You can do anything you want with them. But this sounds to me-- I haven't read the book. I'd very much like to now, but this is another of the monster plague novels, it sounds like. So this is how the genres, the kinds of monsters that were fascinated by, if you'll pardon the expression, bleed together.

KERRI MILLER: To the phones, to Deborah in Minneapolis. Hi, Deborah.

AUDIENCE: Hi. I have a question. I'm wondering why we as human beings would embrace monsters and zombies and then reject our-- or persecute our fellow human beings who are different from us, different skin-

KERRI MILLER: What a good question.

AUDIENCE: Or different cultures or different religions. Can you talk about that a little bit?

KERRI MILLER: David, do you want to take a swing at that?

DAVID EDELSTEIN: Well, I would say that there are increasingly now-- well, let's-- if we look back at the original Frankenstein, at Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the creature becomes an outcast. He is hideously disfigured. And much of his rage against society and his creator comes from being sent out into the world without the equipment in order to fit into society.

Now, you're seeing a lot of myths along this line, particularly the whole X-Men series in graphic novels and movies that in some cases, in the X-Men movies have a very almost explicitly gay subtext in which we're dealing with the whole idea of people who are branded freaks because they have abilities, some say blessings, some say curses, that make them different from everyone else.

KERRI MILLER: Ben, you have a thought about that or Chris?

BEN WINTERS: Well, no, I can't really-- I can't do better than David on that question. But certainly, there's a connection there between our fear of the other and the way that it becomes a part of our literature and our movies, for sure.

KERRI MILLER: We have an online comment here from Kathleen in Minneapolis as I've been asking for titles to add to our list. She says World War Z. Not my normal thing. Picked it up, couldn't put it down. Outmaneuvering immortality. If I can't have it, neither can you. Which one of you three has read that, if any?

DAVID EDELSTEIN: Oh, it's genius.

KERRI MILLER: Is it?

CHRISTOPHER FARNSWORTH: Yeah, it's a great book.

DAVID EDELSTEIN: It's genius. That's Max Brooks. See, that's an example-- now, he is very frank about his debt to George Romero. But what he does is take that zombie myth or ghoul myth really that Romero created and just look at it from every conceivable angle, from a psychological, sociological, political, how do we rebuild society with this threat.

I mean, he takes it-- I can't even do justice to the number of different voices that he-- it's an epistolary novel in some ways or linked short stories set in the same world. And I recommend it without reservation. It's a great book.

KERRI MILLER: I really hate to say that-- Chris, Ben, David, I hate to say this. We're out of time. An hour on zombies and vampires just flies, doesn't it?

DAVID EDELSTEIN: We forgot werewolves too.

KERRI MILLER: I know. I invite you all back for another conversation on this. And I promise no interruptions, all right?

CHRISTOPHER FARNSWORTH: Thanks so much.

DAVID EDELSTEIN: Can we do werewolves and mummies next time?

KERRI MILLER: We certainly can. David Edelstein, thank you so much.

DAVID EDELSTEIN: Thank you.

KERRI MILLER: Ben Winters, thank you so much.

BEN WINTERS: My pleasure. Thanks for having me on.

KERRI MILLER: Chris Farnsworth, thank you so much. Really a pleasure to have you all here.

CHRISTOPHER FARNSWORTH: Happy to be here. Thank you.

KERRI MILLER: All right, so I have made this list of all the recommendations. And we will post it on the Midmorning book page, something to look forward to Euan Kerr. We are full service here.

EUAN KERR: It is amazing.

KERRI MILLER: It's not just the radio. It's the online stuff too on the book page.

EUAN KERR: I'm scribbling down stuff here too. This is just incredible. And talking about incredible, we blew through the goal.

KERRI MILLER: Right on.

EUAN KERR: But you know what?

KERRI MILLER: What?

EUAN KERR: I think it's time to turn up the heat. What do you mean only 35 over the goal? Let's really-- we actually-- we have a big goal today, folks. We need to get 2,500 folks through the door to become members, to renew their membership at Minnesota Public Radio.

If we do that, we get $25,000 from this special fund put together by your friends and neighbors, listeners who feel that this is something that's worthwhile. So let's do it. 1-800-227-2811 or click and join at minnesotapublicradio.org.

KERRI MILLER: I've got some news for you that we have been hearing from people who are either new or renewing members. And they are taking the step of becoming sustaining members.

EUAN KERR: Good stuff.

KERRI MILLER: We could not thank you enough for that because what it means is we don't have to send you renewals. During the drives, you can just kind of tune out of the drive messages here and just listen to the content. Thank you so much, Diane and James, for being new members and sustaining members.

Anthony, thank you for being a new member and a sustaining member. He says, my job can be mindless a lot of the time. MPR keeps my mind sharp. You bet.

EUAN KERR: That's why we're here.

KERRI MILLER: Whether we're talking about zombies or vampires or we're talking about science or we're talking politics, our gain-- our goal, our aim is to keep you as sharp as you can possibly be and give you the depth and the context that you need. 800-227-2811 online at minnesotapublicradio.org.

EUAN KERR: Help us meet the challenge. Help us get 2,500 new and renewing members. Help us earn that $25,000 to keep this radio station strong, keep this news and information pumping out of your radio out of your computer, all the great services that are here as a result of membership. We need to hear from you right now. 1-800-227-2811 or click and join at minnesotapublicradio.org.

KERRI MILLER: We rocked right on through that goal for the two hours. We want to keep the momentum going. We'll end up with that $25,000 that we need to keep us right on track here for the membership drive. May I mention one more time the Kerri Miller Book Club. If you love books, if you tune in when you hear us talking about books, if you've been a member for a while, maybe this is a way to elevate your membership at Minnesota Public Radio.

And a special incentive this time around. If you become a new member of the Kerri Miller Book Club, four tickets to you to two sold-out shows at the Fitz, our Talking Volumes series here. Nora Ephron, you can't find a ticket for that anywhere. You'll be going. And Nicole Krauss, can find a ticket for that anywhere. You'll be going, but you have to join now. 800-227-2811.

EUAN KERR: You know that you're going to do it eventually. Why not do it right now? We need your support to keep programming like this, which is fun, which is informative, which really helps you sound smarter when you're at the coffee shop or at cocktail parties or whatever. This is good stuff. We need your help. 1-800-227-2811 or click and join at minnesotapublicradio.org.

KERRI MILLER: If you stream Midmorning every day or many days of the week from your office or your home or wherever you are-- and a lot of you do. I get the questions online. I hope you'll take this opportunity to click and join. Grab your credit card. Hey, become a sustaining member while you're renewing or you're joining for the first time.

Think about the Kerri Miller Book Club. Love to have you in the club and to meet you. 800-227-2811. Thank you.

ANNOUNCER 5: Programming is supported by the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community. Since 2004, donating 199 automatic external defibrillators to the Minnesota State Patrol. Information on requesting an AED for--